


The Exact Shape of Wishes

by ashesandhoney



Series: Miracles [2]
Category: The Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Demons Are Assholes, Multi, Pining, Self-Indulgent, but it's a mess that makes me happy and you're welcome to join in if it makes you happy too, complicated magical bullshit, dunno what fandom that is from but we're using it because they are, loosely i use that tag loosely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26317654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: When William Herondale was 14, he made a terrible wish. He made a deal with a demon and it never came true. More than a century and a half later, he's still living with that failed wish and the unintentional consequences.And then one day, the promise was fulfilled. The thing he'd asked for, had given up his life for, suddenly appeared.
Relationships: Jem Carstairs/Tessa Gray, Jem Carstairs/Will Herondale
Series: Miracles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912267
Comments: 31
Kudos: 39





	1. A Deal

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Part 2. 
> 
> You can probably follow it without reading Exact Shape of Miracles but this is intended as a continuation, not as a standalone.

The moon was high and full over the narrow streets of Whitechapel. The neighbourhood was loud and dirty. Despite the glamour and the three blades he had hidden under a battered great coat, a voice that spoke in his mother's accent whispered in his ear that he was going to get robbed. Fourteen was too young to be on streets like this at an hour such as this. As that thought crossed his mind, a child half his age ran past him and darted between two men arguing. 

He had the choice to go home. He was coddled. He was a coddled country boy who was mad to have left home at all. 

But here he was. At least he was tall enough that in the coat, no one looked at him twice. He set his jaw and pushed off the wall he had been leaning against. He was toughening up. Not so coddled anymore. The difficult part of his evening was already over. All that was left now was to go home. In his hands was a metal box filled with silver powder. He held it in both hands. 

Life and death. Life and death for someone who mattered more than he did and it fit in a little metal box. 

He wove through the streets until he finally found the open space that marked the river. Thick noxious fog wreathed the gas lamps with an eerie glow. Will cut across the nearest bridge, he just wanted to put space between himself and that damn drug den and that damn neighbourhood and that damn memory of his mother's voice that reminded him of home so deeply that it was like a hook dug in under his ribs. 

In the middle of the bridge was a man. 

Will narrowed his eyes and the man turned to look at him, cocked his head to the side and smiled. 

The smile stretched too far, an inhuman spread of teeth, the dimples drawn up to his cheekbones. The monster opened his eyes and the fog swirled around them. Thickening. Dampening. Pushing the sound of the city back like a memory. Will stood frozen. 

Panic hit Will first. A child’s fear. 

Then it crystallized into anger. A teenager’s bravado. 

How dare this thing interrupt him tonight? How dare it slow him down? He had somewhere to be. Someone to be with. He was not a mundane boy on an errand for his mother. He was a warrior. He was armed. He was not to be trifled with and toyed with. Magic tricks in the fog weren't going to cow a Shadowhunter. Will was his father's son and his father had faced torture and exile for love. Will could face this one smiling jackass monster. 

His motivation was as strong.

He wrapped the box up in his handkerchief, wrapping it tightly before tucking it into his jacket pocket, close to his chest. It wouldn't do to spill it in a battle. He’d come all this way to buy it. Come all this way so that Jem wouldn’t have to. 

"Herondale." 

The monster's voice creaked like branches in the dead of winter and the smile didn't waver. Will didn't know what it was. Vampires and werewolves were easy enough to understand but this thing could have been a warlock or a demon or a ghost or something he hadn't even heard of yet. 

"Depends on who's asking," he said and his voice came out with a bit of a crack but steady enough. 

"I can offer you the miracle you seek." 

"I'm seeking a stiff drink. I can get that at any tavern between here and Westminster." 

The creaking sound it made might have been laughter. Will had his hand on the hilt of his sword. A sword didn't seem like enough. It wasn't even a seraph blade. He wasn't allowed to use those without supervision so all he had were throwing knives, this runed sword and a dagger in his boot. 

It wasn't enough. This thing had crawled out of hell. Some instinct in his gut knew that. There were demons who were little more than animals with extra teeth and those he could defeat. He had done it before. This creature had human intelligence. It looked at him with the malice of a hungry animal but there was so much calculation in those eyes. 

"It will cost you,” the creaking voice told him. 

"I've got a shilling in my pocket." 

"It will cost you but his life is worth more to you than your own." 

Will's bravado fled and his jaw locked up. He sneered. He let all the disgust and horror and anger show on his face. His hands rolled into fists and the creature watched him with a too white face and none of those trappings of humanity left. He couldn’t describe it. Couldn’t explain it. It was more than a person and far less. 

How dare he? How dare this thing bring up Jem? How dare it? It stood, still and wrong. Limbs too long. Smile too broad. Eyes blank and white as marbles. Watching him. Amused by his anger. Like Will was nothing but a kitten fluffed up and hissing. 

"And far less than yours," Will ground out. 

"I can offer a solution." 

“Solution,” Will repeated. 

He scanned the world around them, planning his retreat, just like the tutor taught him. He was supposed to scan for landmarks and levels. He was supposed to scan for chances to get above the enemy or below it. He was supposed to scan for things that could be used as weapons in case something happened to his. Will cast around for all of that and more. 

Anything. 

There was nothing. 

Even the cobblestones of the bridge below him were gone. He stood in featureless white. The fog had coalesced and twisted in tight. It was everywhere and nowhere. A tiny white room. A fathomless void. All white. 

There was no where to go. Nowhere to run. 

“What exactly is it that you want?” the grinning demon asked. It’s voice slipped a few registers to a baritone growl as it added, “Tell me the truth.” 

Will almost asked for a snow white pony or a pile of money but instead the words that came out were the truth, “I don’t want him to die. I want him to be happy.” 

“And is it worth your future?”

“Yes.” 

Will locked his jaw and bit his tongue in the process. He shouldn’t have spoken. Shouldn’t have said a word. He knew better. Hadn’t he made this mistake before? Shouldn’t he have learned something? The bite brought a sharp pain and the tang of the blood filling his mouth. It grounded him. It made it all real. He wasn’t dreaming. This was real. The void didn’t fade but his thoughts sharpened. He wouldn’t say anything else. 

It was already too late. 

“A deal has been struck then,” the demon said. 

The void pushed in until Will had to shut his eyes and hold his breath until the pressure released. 

He was left standing on a bridge. Alone. 


	2. Landing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very slight suicidal ideation in the inner monologue here.

The flight had gotten in early in the morning and he hadn’t slept properly in a long time. He was tired and probably insane. He ducked into a public bathroom just past the mile long immigration queue and pulled his shirt to the side. The bright fluorescent lights made him look paler than he thought he should be and the dark shadows under his eyes stood out. The black marks on his skin were sharper in this light. The reminder he needed was there on his chest. He could only see the top edge but it was enough. 

He traced it with his thumb. Just that one brush stroke line. It didn’t feel like anything. The marks left scars but they weren’t the raised tissue of a healed wound. They were just pale etchings left behind once the magic had faded. Angelic power. Whatever. It had been important once but not for a long time. This one was different. This one had never faded. 

He only had the three permanent runes. It had been a conscious decision. He’d overheard his parents talking about what leaving the Clave had meant for his father. The fewer he had, the fewer for them to strip away if he ever left the Clave. Not that they’d had the chance. Just three. 

Memosyne. Voyance. Parabatai. 

Those three were all that were left. 

And only one of them really mattered. 

The parabatai rune should have faded. It faded for every other parabatai left behind after the curse of time caught up to them. Naught but death. But death came for everyone and someone was always left behind. All of them carried the mark. A rune that faded to gray but never to the white ghost of a lesser rune. As pale gray as the trail of smoke left behind after a candle was snuffed out. For everyone but Will. He still carried the lines that tied his soul to Jem’s though Jem’s soul had gone somewhere he could not follow. 

Not that he hadn’t tried. 

He had tried. 

The past was rising up thick and heavy out of his memories. Parabatai was the only rune that mattered but it wasn’t the one that kept him up most nights. His memosyne rune worked perfectly fine. It stored his memories for him. It added a layer of magic to all those things that should have faded into the haze of the past. The sharp smell of yin fen. The haze of London log. Funeral pyres and gravestones marked with names of everyone who mattered. The Thames. Gas lamps. The way music echoed down the stone hallways of the London Institute. The way it didn’t. 

“Attention all passengers,” came from the hallway outside the blue tiled bathroom a pleasant American voice reminded him not to leave baggage unattended. Her voice pulled him back to reality. 

Reality was an airport. 

Reality was a public bathroom full of other travelers. 

Reality was the one brushing his teeth and another fussing with his hair. 

Reality was more trouble than it was worth. 

Will rolled his neck and put his headphones back in. An audio book. Great Expectations. He was nostalgic and something about the rhythms of language in an old book helped. It helped push the real voices of the past out. He had traveled like a mundane and he wasn’t about to recommend the experience but it was a better choice than asking someone for help and needing to explain this. Ragnor probably would have opened him a portal. Ragnor didn’t like him but he didn’t like any of his friends either so Will figured he was in good company on that one. 

“Welcome to New York,” someone said as Will passed them a passport that claimed he had been born twenty three years before. 

He was about to age out of that one. He wouldn’t be able to pass as older than twenty five. He’d have to get a new identity and start at eighteen again. That was tedious but he had a guy in London who made it easy. Expensive but easy. At least he was over twenty one on this trip. When it was ultimately a failure, he was going to need a good drink.

He plunged out into the crowd of people moving in and out of airport doors and stepped out into the cold of New York City. 

***

He leaned against the door frame and rang the buzzer again. Magnus was ignoring him. The walk up to the loft was in a back alley. It was neat for an alley but it was still an alley. Will held the case close to his chest and tapped out a tune into the buzzer. It wasn’t anything Magnus would recognize. They weren’t the kind of friends who had those kinds of inside jokes or secret codes. Will was hoping he could annoy him into answering the door. 

“I will smite you if you do that again,” a voice from the panel said. 

“You tried that. Remember? We spend a good six months trying and failing to smite me.” 

“Go away, Herondale, it is early.” 

“It is not. It’s 11 in the morning here,” Will said. He was jetlagged as all hell but Magnus lived in this time zone. He didn’t have an excuse. There was grumbling on the other end of the line but Magnus didn’t hang up on him so Will pushed on. “You’re still screwing a Shadowhunter right?”

“Engaged. Alexander and I —”

“I don’t actually want to talk to you. I want to talk to him.” 

“No.” 

“You can murder me again after you introduce us. Won’t that make you feel better?”

“No.” 

“Come on Magnus, for old times sake.” 

No answer. 

The panel went quiet and Will waited this time. He tapped his fingers on his knee rather than on the call button. He was expecting the voice on the panel to insult him but instead the door opened. Will didn’t flinch. He didn’t straighten either. He probably should have but he had worked hard to cultivate an air of disaffected disrespect. Now he had to practice to be respectful. He was too tired for remembering how polite people behaved in this century. 

He had no idea. If he tried, it was either going to be full Victorian manners or nothing. And he hadn’t brought any calling cards. 

A tall Shadowhunter with dark hair, blue eyes and a hideous sweater stood straight and severe. He was handsome which wasn’t surprising. Magnus tended to date pretty people. He did not tend to date Shadowhunters. That he spoke to Will was an exception to a rule that held hard and fast with everyone else. And then he’d turned around and gotten engaged to a Shadowhunter. The child of Circle members no less. Will considered him but the reason behind Magnus’s sudden change in taste wasn’t immediately evident. 

“Hey,” Will said. 

“Why exactly did Magnus try to murder you the last time?” the man in the doorway asked. 

“I asked him to.” 

A blank expression. A minor frown. 

“What are you?”

“Cursed.” 

“That’s dramatic.” 

“I’m that too but as to why I look about twelve years old and last spoke to Magnus in nineteen - god, what was it, fifty four, fifty six maybe, something like that. The answer is cursed.” 

“You’re a warlock.”

Will shifted the violin case but didn’t put it down. He was not going to put it down, even in the case, on a back alley in New York. It wasn’t a perfectly rational reaction but he wasn’t have a particularly rational month so he held onto it while he did everything else and had since he’d picked it up. He juggled it while he pulled off the glove and held up his hand to show off the voyance rune. Gloves and high collars were his normal. Explaining the Nephilim thing in his line of work was difficult. He hadn’t flaunted it in a very long time. 

A frown. 

“Cursed.” 

“How old are you?”

“A hundred and twenty. No. That’s wrong. I’d have to do the math. I don’t really keep track. I was born in 1861. I just need to borrow a stele and as I don’t really want to become the Silent Brother’s case study again, I’d rather not go ask the Clave directly. I figured, you know Magnus, and this is definitely not the weirdest request anyone has ever come to Magnus with. I have personally come to Magnus with weirder requests.” 

“I don’t und-”

Will cut him off. “Listen, no one understands. That’s the half the fun of this whole mess. Magnus knows the story, if you want to go hash out all the reasons that it is impossible, you can do it with him. I just need a single rune. You can stand there, watch me draw it, and then I’ll give you the stele back and disappear and leave you to your life.” 

“You don’t age.” 

“I also don’t die. Normal immortals die. I don’t. There’s always some bizarre quirk of fate waiting to save my life. It’s not that I can’t physically die, it’s that reality reorganizes itself to save my life. A few of those have been a hell of an experience. A freak tornado was involved once and another time someone had a sudden heart attack at a very opportune time. It’s all very interesting.” 

“That’s im-”

“Impossible. Yes. Of course it fucking is. I, on the other hand, am impatient. I need to borrow a stele. Can I use yours for thirty seconds, please?”

The Shadowhunter screwing - dating - married to - Magnus Bane stared at Will as though he was trying to turn it all over in his head. Will drummed his fingers on the case in his arms and kept his stupid cursed mouth shut. 

“Yeah, sure,” the Shadowhunter whose name Will hadn’t learned said. 

He was still staring at Will like he was bursting with questions and he did not entirely approve of any of it but he dug the stele out of the pocket of his jeans and held it out. Will took it. 

For a moment it had all the ceremony of borrowing a pen in the line at the bank and then it hit him again. Why he was doing this. Why he was in New York. Why he had come so far to borrow this damn piece of crystal and wood. Will held it, the stele sat on his palm and he stared at it. 

“What are you doing?” Alec asked. 

“Losing my mind,” Will told him. 

“It’s cold. Are you just going to stand there all day?”

“No.”

The Shadowhunter cocked his head and pointedly crossed his arms. 

“What I should be doing, is this,” Will said. 

He shifted the violin again so he was holding the case by the handle and then drew a tracking rune on the back of his hand. The shock of drawing a rune after so long made his hand shake. His head ached a little with the effort of it. He was out of practice. He hadn’t trained properly in far too long. Physical training wasn’t enough, not or this. He could feel the power and it skittered around like it was a horse that didn’t want to listen to him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He reached into himself. He didn’t reach for the magic of this rune, he reached for the other one. He reached out for that tentative sense of Jem and let that be his center. 

“You ok?”

“Out of practice.” 

“Do you want me to do it?”

“No.” 

No, Will did not want someone else to do it. He needed to do this himself. He had found the focus and the control that had been second nature once and he took a long slow breath. The power being channeled by the rune finally settled. It so long that Will’s first thought was that he had failed, that it wouldn’t work, that it wasn’t possible, that he hadn’t been a Shadowhunter in so long that he couldn’t use this power. 

Then it sparked. The rune caught the way it was supposed to and he knew. 

“Thank you.” 

It came out with too much emotion in it. He handed the stele back and Alec held it with all the ceremony of a borrowed pen handed back in line at the bank. Will meant it. Will really meant it. He smiled at Alec but he was already turning away. 

He had someplace to be. 

He wouldn’t even need to take another plane.


	3. A Cafe

The cafe stood on a quiet street full of kitschy, cute, niche places that people took pictures of to post on Instagram. Will considered that. He had an Instagram. He liked having an Instagram just like he had enjoyed having a pager and bought a new wardrobe every few years. It was so easy to get stuck when you lived forever. It was so easy to hate the world for being different instead of embrace it for being new. So he followed trends. He snapped a picture of the little shopping street one handed but didn’t stop to post it right away. Instagram didn’t need to be all that instant. It could wait. 

He was close. The tracking rune was leading him someplace close. Which meant the owner of the violin was someplace close. He had the right street and he had an impression of the store front he would need but nothing more. It was enough. 

The place was a cafe with white trim around the windows and the letters picking out the name of the place in gold letters. A striped awning covered a small patio where a couple sat leaned together over a tiny ornate table. Neither of them was the person that Will was looking for so he kept moving towards the door. He was holding the violin in both arms again. He was worried about the hinge on the handle. He didn’t want to risk banging it into something. His heart was beating too fast and nothing felt real. He needed a tether. He didn’t have anything else to hold onto and didn’t mind if he looked like a crazy person. 

“Wel- Welcome,” the person behind the desk said. 

Will cracked a flirty grin out of habit. He had learned how to use his looks as a defense a long time ago. He wasn’t really in the mood to flirt with baristas but the smile had already escaped. The girl behind the counter was blonde. Short. Curly hair. She looked about the same age as Will looked. Will was dressed older. He could usually pass for twenty five in a suit and he put effort into that. He had stopped aging at about twenty and he wished it had been a few years after that. Life would be easier if he didn’t look like a high school student as soon as he wore a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. 

Since he couldn’t change his face without using surgery or extensive magic, neither of which appealed, he changed the clothes. He was wearing jeans but his shoes were expensive and under the brown leather jacket, he wore a tailored shirt. He’d changed before heading out here. Which was silly. Either this was a goose chase and wouldn’t matter or he was here. If he were here, he wouldn’t care. He probably wouldn’t even notice. He had never cared much for fashion. Still. Will had put on a nice shirt and the good boots before he had headed across town from his hotel. 

Will didn’t let himself say his name, even to himself. It felt like letting himself hope. Hope was dangerous. Hope had always been dangerous. 

Behind the espresso machine, another girl tilted her head at him. It wasn’t quite a scowl but it was disapproval. Will toned the smile down for her benefit. He held eye contact with her while he did it to let her know that he had gotten the message. They didn’t look alike but the brunette had all the protectiveness of an older sister. She shook her head slightly but he got a hint of a smile as she went back to what she was doing behind the machine.

She was just slightly familiar. Like someone he’d seen somewhere. He couldn’t place her and he had other things to worry about. Will turned his attention back to the blonde. Will made an order without any flirtation. He was nice but turned everything else down to zero. The girl put it in and her disapproving friend set to work making it, still keeping an eye on Will like he was about to do something inappropriate. 

Will turned to scan the cafe. The person he was looking for was not in it. The violin was still held in the hand with the rune and the rune was still active and the rune was very sure that this was the right place but he wasn’t here. 

He was not here. 

Will had tried to prepare himself for the possibility that Jem wouldn’t be here. That this was a flight of madness or another mistake made by the world’s worst fairy godfather. He had tried. Jem had died. Will had been there. Will had felt it happen. He had felt Jem’s fingers finally go completely slack. No more tremours. No more holding on. His breathing had gone so shallow it was hard to pinpoint the moment when it stopped but Will had known. He had felt the moment when the parabatai bond let go. 

Jem was dead. 

Jem could not be in a trendy cafe in an American city. 

Jem was not here. 

“Pardon me?” Will said to the barista who had asked him a question that he hadn’t heard past the roaring of his thoughts. 

“A name for the order?” she asked again. 

“Jem.”

Her compatriot looked up at that and Will thought it was just because they didn’t usually take names for orders and the other girl was flirting with someone she thought an inappropriate match. She said nothing but Will could feel her attention on him as she made his drink. He couldn’t remember what it was anymore. Of course, Jem wasn’t here. Will had gone mad. 

“Will,” she said. 

He turned automatically to pick up the cup. That wasn’t the name he had given and his hand hovered over the kitschy patterned china mug as he realized it. He looked at her. She was as tall as he was and she met his eye. 

“Is he here?” 

It was a mad question. Utter insanity. 

“What’s your full name?” she asked. 

“Mine? Herondale. William Owen. Is he here? What is this?” he asked in a whisper.

There was a possibility that this was a trap. Will hadn’t even considered that a moment ago. He worked in security. His agency specialized in keeping people safe from very dangerous things. Those very dangerous things had come after him before but this was so complex for a trap. So impossible. So personal. He could feel the parabatai bond. It wasn’t possible to fake that feeling. It couldn’t be a trap or a trick. He wouldn’t accept it. 

Besides, she didn’t look like a threat. He was too smart for a pretty face to trick him but the thought lingered: she didn’t look like a threat. 

“Tell me something he could confirm but no one else can.” 

Will hesitated and then laid the violin case down on the counter. They had the attention of the blonde woman but none of the customers had noticed. Their exchange was quiet and polite but nothing in Will felt quiet or polite. He wasn’t making a scene but the feeling in his chest was going to explode out and cause one any moment now. 

He opened the case and she watched. She had pale eyes, on the border between blue and gray, the color of misty mornings. He looked away from her to find the little compartment in the velvet lining, it was so old and so fragile but he’d done the best he could to keep it in good condition. Jem would have to forgive him for the state of the velvet. Inside the compartment was a necklace. 

Will held it out. 

Misty Mornings took it and he let the chain coil in her hands. 

“His father had that made for his mother. It’s the gift he gave her when they got engaged. She told him no. She told him that she was not going to leave the battle field to sit at home and raise babies. That was the expectation back in those days, that even if a woman had trained, she would not fight after her children were born. Her job would be to raise the next generation. So she told him no. They negotiated for months before she agreed to marry him on very specific terms,” Will said with a little smile. 

“Take a seat. I’ll be right back,” she said curling her hand around the jade pendant. The chain hung down from her fist. Will immediately wanted it back. He didn’t take Jem’s things out. He hadn’t shown that necklace to anyone else in more than a hundred years. He did not like the idea of someone walking out of the room with one of the very few mementos he had left. 

He nodded. 

He nodded and closed the violin case and took the nearest empty table and sat with his cappuccino and waited for a miracle 133 years in the making.


	4. A Reunion

Jem’s hair was still wet. The pieces fell forward into his eyes and each time he caught sight of one of the brown ones, a smile flickered. He had sat in the bathtub until the water had gone cold and his fingers had shriveled up. He checked them again at that thought but they had smoothed out again and looked normal. His callouses were all gone. His hands were smoother than they’d been since he was very small and he turned them in front of his face a few times. 

Babies did this. Babies waved their fingers in front of their face or stuck their toes up so they could study them and experiment with movement and sensation. He could remember Tessa’s son studiously tasting any and everything and turning his head to take in every noise. That baby had never been born in this world. There had never been a James Herondale with wide strange eyes. Jem pushed that thought out. He wasn’t ready to face that and all its ramifications. He dropped his hands back to his lap. 

He was relearning the world. 

One moment, one sensation at a time. He was putting the pieces back together.

Tessa had left him in the apartment that afternoon because the other staff in the coffee shop wasn’t experienced enough to run it by herself. They had had breakfast together and lingered, curled up together on the sofa while music played from a speaker. They hadn’t talked about the heavy things. The big questions could wait. They hadn’t compared notes on their different worlds. Instead they’d talked about the little bits of life like favourite colours and vacation spots. She had kissed him before she’d left and it had been like a first kiss all over again. 

She was going to close early and be back in time for them to go for dinner. He was supposed to choose a place. 

There was a knock on the door and then she came in. 

“I wasn’t expecting you for another few hours,” he said smiling. 

He got up and crossed the room to her. He was selfish and greedy and wanted another kiss. She looked serious and he should have said something about that first but selfish and greedy took precedence. She turned her face up and met the kiss with a smile that made him feel less selfish. Then her expression shifted to serious again. 

“There’s someone downstairs. He came to see you.” 

“Me?”

She nodded and held out her hand. There was something in it and very slowly, she put her necklace - the one he’d given her on the day he asked her to marry him - in his palm. The stone was heavy and warm from being held against her skin. Green and gold. He knew it immediately but he turned it to read the inscription nonetheless. He ran his thumb over it a few times before the impossibility of her having it hit him. 

“Someone gave you this?”

“He showed up with a very old violin case, expensive clothes, and a Shadowhunter rune on his hand. He used your name to order. This was your mother’s. Your father gave it to her when he asked her to marry him.” 

Jem nodded but his thoughts were blank. 

“I’m going to send him to you. Whatever this is, I think it is better if it happens up here and not in a room full of strangers.” 

She turned to go back downstairs, leaving him the necklace coiled in his palm. 

“Tess?” She turned back to look at him. “Is it Will?”

“I think so.” 

“It can’t be Will.” 

“Crossing from one reality to another is impossible. Leaving the Silent Brothers is impossible. What’s one more impossibility in this story?”

He nodded. 

She was gone for a few minutes. They were the longest minutes of Jem’s very long life. It was a century of empty hours in the Silent City stretching out between the seconds ticked by on the clock. Jem’s thoughts wouldn’t settle into the shape of anything at all. He couldn’t even panic. He was just lost. 

Jem just sat and waited them out until there was another knock at the door. 

She didn’t let herself in this time. She waited for him to come to the door. The hallway was too long and it took a lifetime to walk down it but Jem was losing his mind and all his Silent Brother mannerisms had reasserted themselves as a sort of defense between himself and the world. He moved slow and closed his eyes as his hand fell to the knob. There was no retreat behind the glass. The distance of the Silent Brothers was gone. He was here and this moment was real and he would face it as himself. 

He wasn’t sure if he could face the disappointment. He wasn’t sure how to face the possibility that it was real. 

Perhaps he should have spent the walk thinking up something poetic to say. Some fitting first line. He didn’t. His thoughts wouldn’t give him anything usable. It was hard to remember how to use a door handle correctly. It creaked under his hand before finally letting in the afternoon light. 

The man standing on the little balcony just behind Tessa was thoroughly modern. He wore jeans and a leather jacket and he was holding a take away coffee cup with the logo of Tessa’s shop on the front. He probably had a cell phone in his pocket and his hair was done in an artful disaster of dark curls. For a moment, those details were all Jem could see. None of them were familiar. Will had always been particular with his fashion choices but this wasn’t waistcoats and tailored jackets. He looked like something out of a magazine. 

Still, the overall impression was the same. A little too polished. Will with his armour on was always a little too polished. A little too practiced. 

Then the stranger let out an embarrassed laugh that was almost a snort. He put the coffee cup down on the rail and pushed his fingers through his hair. A nervous gesture that was familiar. He had Will’s eyes and that tilted smile was Will’s and suddenly he wasn’t a stranger anymore. 

“Hey, Carstairs, I like the hair.” 

“Hello, William.” 

“Are you?” this man started and his hand started to come up. He was both a stranger and Will all at once. Jem reached out and grabbed his hand and a few more of the pieces fell into place. Real and solid and warm and Will. Grabbed it and squeezed. Will inhaled sharply and it wasn’t a sob - Will didn’t cry where anyone else could see him - but it was close. 

“Actually here. I haven’t figured out how or why but I’m actually here,” he said. He squeezed again. “So are you. I was there when- You shouldn’t be here.” 

“Neither should you.” 

Jem glanced at Tessa. She was still standing nearby. She held his gaze but he couldn’t read what she was thinking. Carefully, she stepped forward and took the case that Will was holding. Will almost didn’t let it go but Jem was pulling him forward and he let her take it so he could return the hug. 

He grabbed hold of Jem like he was drowning and Jem returned the force of it. Jem closed his eyes and pressed his face into Will’s shoulder and gave up trying to think. 

Tessa’s fingers brushed his arm, “Call me if you need me.” He glanced up. She was standing behind Will, she had put the case - the violin case - down on the dining room table and once she’d met his eyes and given him a smile, she walked around them and back out the door, swinging it shut behind her. 

“What happened?” Jem asked. 

“I’m an idiot,” Will said. 

“Occasionally true but I’m not sure how that answers the question.” 

“It does.”

“Hm.”

Will laughed. “Fuck, I missed you.”

“You missed me mocking you?”

“I missed everything about you. You whispering things I only half understand in Chinese. Your hair. The way you narrow your eyes just a little bit when you think I’m being unreasonable but don’t want anyone else to see it. You fussing over knife sets. You not complaining over the mushrooms in the stew even when you really want to complain. You just sitting there at the end of the table, reading a book or writing notes or talking to Charlotte while I pretended to sleep. You. I missed you.” 

“I missed you too,” Jem said. “If I had been offered one wish, this is what I would have chosen.” 

“Funny choice of phrase.” 

“Why?”

“Because that is exactly what happened. That’s why I’m an idiot. In my defense, I was a fifteen year old idiot and I think everyone has idiotic moments when they are fifteen.”

“You were offered a wish? By a djinn?”

“While that is a reasonable guess, no. Djinn can’t mess around with reality like this. Turns out, mostly likely culprit was a void demon.”

“Will.” 

“Yeah. I know. Trust me, I know what a bad idea it was to even interact with one of those bastards! I was fifteen. I have lived with it for the last hundred and thirty some odd years. I am very aware of everything in that tone you just used. I know. I have regretted it but I do not regret it now.” 

“You’ve lived with it.”

“I don’t understand void demon logic. I think it forgot to save your life in this world and then had to bring another you over from another time line but void demons live in the void between worlds, they don’t really understand linear time, so there was a very long time between the day I made the wish and today. In order to compensate, it just made sure I didn’t die.” 

“Shit. William.” 

“Reality bends around me sometimes.” 

“You’ve done some research.” 

“I’ve had some time.” 

Jem laughed and then sobered as the details hit him. “You’re immortal.” 

“Functionally.” 

“How have you coped with that?”

“It has it’s ups and downs. Some decades are better than others,” Will said with one of those careless shrugs he had always been so good at. 

Jem considered him. Time stretched and compressed between the last moment he had seen those eyes and this one. This man looked young. Really young. The memories that Jem had of Will with this unlined face were ancient. Fragile. Memories from before. Memories of Will at seventeen with his muddy boots up on the settee. Will wobbling in the courtyard of the Institute, high as a kite before Jem hit him in the face. Will at fourteen with that burning intensity in his eyes when he talked about cures was only a few steps away from this face. 

Jem knew him but in those eyes was something that Jem didn’t recognize. Someone he didn’t recognize. Not the angry boy he’d been as a teen. Not the young man with a pair of children and a beautiful wife and a bright future. Not the middle aged man who refused to let go of his sense of humour even when things skittered sideways. Not the stable, happy, old man who had made it through the ups and downs of a long life. 

Those blue eyes were the same colour that Jem remembered but there was something in them. Some depth. That ineffable strangeness that came with too many years. Immortality left a mark even on bodies that didn’t change. The Brotherhood had built a cage of glass to stand between Jem and the world. Will had lived all the years out in a world that wasn’t always kind. 

“Are you still? Immortal? Does this reunion change things for you? If I am here because of you and you are immortal, am I?” Jem asked. 

Will went still. “I don’t know. I really don’t. The demon doesn’t check in. I am guessing and filling in gaps with research. I don’t actually know. I don’t know if I start aging again because I’ve caught up to the wish I made. I don’t know how it works for you. Shit. I hadn’t thought about this part. I didn’t think it would ever happen. I thought I was just stuck, just a glitch in the system. A lost thread some monster left dangling from the fabric of reality.” 

“Both monsters and reality have done worse things to both of us over the years,” Jem said. 

“I know.” 

Will tilted over and rested his head on Jem’s shoulder again. He didn’t smell like any of Jem’s memories of Will. Still, he was. Jem wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him in closer. Will let himself be pulled in and cuddled a little closer.

“Whatever it is. Whatever happens next. We’re in it together.” 

“I have never wanted to hear anything so much.”


End file.
